Resonance Zone Retcon?

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 6 wrote:But any wormhole terminus and the star with which it was associated created a roughly cone-shaped volume of mutual interference, lethal to any ship passing through it, in hyper-space's lowest bands

At All Costs, Chapter 62 wrote:But, fortunately, Manticore-B also lay far outside the resonance zone—the volume of space between the Junction and Manticore-A in which it was virtually impossible to translate between hyper-space and normal-space. Any wormhole terminus associated with a star formed a conical volume in hyper, with the wormhole at its apex and a base centered on the star and twice as wide as its hyper limit, in which hyper-space astrogation became less than totally reliable. The bigger the terminus or junction, the stronger the resonance effect . . . and the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, with its multiple termini, was the largest ever discovered. The resonance zone it produced was more of a tsunami, and it didn't just make astrogation "less than reliable." It made it the next best thing to flatly impossible. Any translation out of the resonance zone risked serious astrogational uncertainty, and any translation into the zone would have been no more than a complicated way to commit suicide.

. . .

"Theo," she continued, pointing one index finger at Commander Kgari, "start plotting a new micro-jump. We'll go straight from here; no dogleg. I want us at least fifty million kilometers outside these newcomers. Seventy-five to a hundred would be better, but don't shave it any closer than fifty."

Kgari looked at her for a moment, and she tasted his shock. She was allowing him a much larger margin of error than Admiral Kuzak had allowed Third Fleet's units, but she was also requiring him to jump straight from a point inside the RZ to one on its periphery. Safety margin or no, astrogation that precise was going to be extraordinarily difficult to deliver, given the fact that his start point's coordinates were going to be subject to significant uncertainty, whatever he did.

Joat42 wrote:"lethal to any ship passing through it, in hyper-space's lowest bands" is not the same as translation to/from hyperspace, it means that the ship first travels into the zone and then out again while being in the lower hyperspace bands.

TheMonster wrote:

Joat42 wrote:"lethal to any ship passing through it, in hyper-space's lowest bands" is not the same as translation to/from hyperspace, it means that the ship first travels into the zone and then out again while being in the lower hyperspace bands.

So there's something special about the "edges" of the RZ that makes it dangerous to leave it while in the lower h-space bands?

So once you're in lower h-space in the RZ, your choices are further upward translation or downward to n-space?

But that's exactly the opposite of the AAC statement that translating in is suicidal.

JohnRoth wrote:What occurs to me is that the way it was originally stated, it would be really obvious that there was a wormhole terminus nearby. You'd be losing ships in job lots, and the place where you lost them would point right at the wormhole.

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:What occurs to me is that the way it was originally stated, it would be really obvious that there was a wormhole terminus nearby. You'd be losing ships in job lots, and the place where you lost them would point right at the wormhole.

RFC has a explained a bit about that.

If you are specifically thinking of the Manticoran junction, there are some things to remember. First, back when the MWJ was discovered, hyperspace travel was not as safe as it is today. There was a higher incidence of unexplained disappearances in the vicinity of Manticore, but traffic was low enough that it was not that obvious. Ships sometimes just didn't make it, and most of the time it wasn't because of resonance zones. Second, people did not yet know as much about junctions and resonance zones. Most people did not know what signs to look for. Third, the search for wormholes was not on everyone's radar. Fourth, no one ever expected a junction quite like Manticore's. It is such a large junction that it set new standards.

If you are talking about other wormholes: Manticore is the largest known junction. No other junction is as deadly as the MWJ. Most are only mildly hazardous.

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:What occurs to me is that the way it was originally stated, it would be really obvious that there was a wormhole terminus nearby. You'd be losing ships in job lots, and the place where you lost them would point right at the wormhole.

RFC has a explained a bit about that.

If you are specifically thinking of the Manticoran junction, there are some things to remember. First, back when the MWJ was discovered, hyperspace travel was not as safe as it is today. There was a higher incidence of unexplained disappearances in the vicinity of Manticore, but traffic was low enough that it was not that obvious. Ships sometimes just didn't make it, and most of the time it wasn't because of resonance zones. Second, people did not yet know as much about junctions and resonance zones. Most people did not know what signs to look for. Third, the search for wormholes was not on everyone's radar. Fourth, no one ever expected a junction quite like Manticore's. It is such a large junction that it set new standards.

If you are talking about other wormholes: Manticore is the largest known junction. No other junction is as deadly as the MWJ. Most are only mildly hazardous.

JohnRoth wrote:

SWM wrote:**quote="JohnRoth"**
What occurs to me is that the way it was originally stated, it would be really obvious that there was a wormhole terminus nearby. You'd be losing ships in job lots, and the place where you lost them would point right at the wormhole.**/quote**
RFC has a explained a bit about that.

If you are specifically thinking of the Manticoran junction, there are some things to remember. First, back when the MWJ was discovered, hyperspace travel was not as safe as it is today. There was a higher incidence of unexplained disappearances in the vicinity of Manticore, but traffic was low enough that it was not that obvious. Ships sometimes just didn't make it, and most of the time it wasn't because of resonance zones. Second, people did not yet know as much about junctions and resonance zones. Most people did not know what signs to look for. Third, the search for wormholes was not on everyone's radar. Fourth, no one ever expected a junction quite like Manticore's. It is such a large junction that it set new standards.

If you are talking about other wormholes: Manticore is the largest known junction. No other junction is as deadly as the MWJ. Most are only mildly hazardous.

No, I'm not thinking specifically about the MWJ. The way it was originally stated in OBS, and given the geometry stated later (the base of the cone is twice as wide as the hyper limit) it would be impossible to transit through hyper to or from normal space across a full half sphere around the star - and that's assuming that the base of the resonance zone is a flat plane through the star.

This is not "there are lots of hazards to navigation, so nobody notices one more." This is more like: as soon as resonance zones were discovered, everyone with a computer and access to ship loss statistics would be in a race to discover the wormhole termini.

lyonheart wrote:Hi JohnRoth,

First wormholes were unknown when Manticore was settled in 1416 PD.

Secondly, most trade Manticore and everyone then had was with the SL, ie inward not outward where the WHJ is, and the colony had far more on its plate than to wonder about the occasional anomaly until after the first several wormholes were discovered and differences between them and the other known navigational hazards could begin to be deciphered, so the RMN might have started looking only 20-30 years before discovering the WHJ in 1585, IIRC.